This extract from Tacitus's Annals of Imperial Rome, written at the turn of the 2nd century, describes the life and political career of Rome's fifth emperor Nero some 50 years earlier. Spanning the murder of his predecessor Claudius, but ending abruptly before the uprisings that would later topple him, it depicts Nero's reign as corrupt and depraved, with the young emperor murdering anyone who threatened his power, from his former wife Octavia to his stepbrother Britannicus and even his own scheming mother Agrippina.